What makes a virtual team high-performing?
A wide range of perspectives from team members who feel understood, listened to, and respected. It seems simple enough, yet miscommunications can undermine the best of intentions for any team, let alone those relying on virtual communications.
Conflicts within high-performing virtual teams often originate in misunderstandings about one another’s expectations. While remote collaborations are now commonplace in global organizations, interactions via small screens magnify the differences in individual or cultural working styles. People often don’t realize how specific their cultural norms and expectations are until they meet people who arrive at those same values from very different perspectives.
In past RW3 CultureWizard studies on the topic of global and virtual teams, over one-third of those surveyed indicated that building relationships (37%) and managing conflict (33%) were the top challenges in virtual environments. When we interact with colleagues across the world remotely, we lack context in the form of tone of voice, body language, or facial expressions. As we think about strategies for high performance in remote teams, it is critical to keep in mind that the lack of face-to-face contact or the lack of visual stimuli impairs our ability to collaborate and work effectively.
Firstly, you will have some team members who may not participate as frequently or who are not as visible as others on virtual and global teams, based on personality or cultural differences. Cultural expectations and different perspectives can impact how team members interact with one another, whether based on their role and rank, or because communication transmits differently across different cultures. This presents an obvious barrier to productive conversations and collaboration efforts.
Secondly, various perspectives on the pacing and process of decision-making can erode trust for your team members. This often involves a difference in expectations on the role of leadership. Are decisions made based on consensus, after thorough risk evaluations? Or are decisions made quickly by those in higher positions, without much discussion? When team members are across time zones, it can be easy for people to feel ill-informed about decisions being made.
Lastly, logistical challenges can impact willingness to interact with team members virtually. If, for example, a team based in New York insists on a weekly call at 9am Eastern Time, their colleagues in Hong Kong will consistently feel their time is being disrespected, since their weekly call falls at 9pm Hong Kong time.
With these common barriers in mind, what are the best practices for virtual team management?
We must first understand how culture impacts business and teamwork to develop a deeper awareness of cultural differences and to ultimately learn how to adjust and adapt to diverse colleagues. Those managing virtual teams can provide opportunities to bring transparency to some of the common themes related to the challenges we just mentioned, such as how trust is built, the role of leadership and decision-making, or direct and indirect communication styles. What have we been assuming that are actually quite different once we have the opportunity to better understand one another?
RW3 CultureWizard’s instructor-led trainings with our expert facilitators leverage the CultureWizard Teamwork Tool to help teams understand their personal cultural values and how they impact the ways they approach work. We recommend a facilitated mediation of your entire team to rebuild the foundations of trust, empathy, and psychological safety needed for a high-performing team’s cohesion.
Objectivity and a willingness for self-awareness can invite opportunities for new insights into what the gaps in understanding and expectations are on your team, and how to bridge those differences. It is important to ask ourselves questions to build awareness of different work styles. With guided facilitation, virtual teams can establish a new “team culture” that is tailored to the specific cultural profile of the team and its members. An example might involve an agenda template that establishes the first 5 minutes of the meeting for interpersonal chat to establish trust. More transactional members of the team who are uncomfortable with small talk can join after this portion.
It is not easy to manage high-performing virtual teams, but when approached thoughtfully with each team member’s perspective and cultural values in mind, you will invite a more collaborative environment where innovation thrives.
Whether in person or in virtual teams, culture plays an important role in teams. Start understanding how culture affects teams with our sample course: Impact of Culture on Teamwork.